Nowadays, the need for continuous learning is more pressing than ever. Most areas of expertise require constant updates every few months. This keeps the individual up to date and skilled. It also ensures competitiveness with what others offer. This urgency for continuous learning has led to the emergence of various platforms, making them convenient places to grow your skills in areas not only for work but also for your social life, hobbies, etc. In this world of continuous growth in opportunities and constantly evolving technologies and demands, people often rely on spot learning within short periods to address emerging needs in their surroundings.
Now, as a high-performing individual, neither you nor people like you should leave the growth to chance. High-performing talents always approach skills development as if they were building a strategy for a long-term win, a plan for an A-class organization. Countless examples show that planning a career trajectory lays the foundation for continuous success while revealing hidden talents and strengths.
Here are five direct business reasons why strategic skills planning is crucial for success.
- Clarity of Purpose and Direction
Imagine you start something by chance and win the golden ticket. While this may be one of the billions of possibilities, it may not be the best strategy for long-term success. Planning the skills you need should bring intentionality to the whole process. By mapping out the competencies you need to develop, you put structure in the entire picture you want to draw in the long run. This creates a sense of empowerment, as you gain clarity on how to prioritize the whole development process for yourself. It helps you focus and avoid or minimize distractions by directing your energy towards the most profitable options.
- Progressing acceleration of goals
Once clarity is no longer an obstacle, the next logical step is to unlock proactivity. Bring a winner’s mindset to your development. Don’t wait for opportunities to show up. Seize and bring them to life when you spot them in the wild. This may mean spotting and listing, or creating a map of skills that guides your growth path. It also helps to identify the gaps in your skill set. Begin working on them before they become a potential threat. Seizing growth opportunities when they arise can boost productivity, shorten the growth path, and give you more time and space to succeed.
- Evolving Marketplace and your resilient behavior
The dynamics of what we do often align with those of the environment in today’s world. And in some cases, what we already know becomes volatile and outdated faster than we can master it to perfection. This change may be caused by shifts in the environment. Disruptions in technologies can also be a cause. Additionally, shifts in local or international market demands may trigger it, depending on the skills and role specifics. Constant assessment and evaluation are necessary. Continuous planning and replanting are also essential. These actions are crucial for adapting to challenges. They help us thrive when the landscape shifts unexpectedly. In other words, they keep us relevant in an ever-changing environment.
- Enhancing professional and leadership reputation
The world today has more than plenty of excellent professionals and good leaders. The problem is that we mostly see the loudest ones who make the most noise. And these, who show themselves, don’t need to be the best leaders and professionals. Showing your commitment to continuous learning and development elevates your personal and professional brand. The groups of people around you will find it easy to see your growth. Those connected with you on social and professional platforms will notice that you elevate yourself as a person. They will also see you as an expert in your area of expertise. Sustainable and strategic skills planning signals to others ambition, flexibility, and adaptability, which open doors to new projects, partnerships, and opportunities.
- Long-Term Growth in sight, but coupled with sustainability
Planning for skills development is often overlooked and used only if a person wants to win in the short term. For example, there may be a crisis, and learning that new skill may solve it successfully. But immediate wins don’t help you; they help others around. Anticipating future trends and aligning your learning agenda with them brings your long-term aspirations to life and future-proofs your career, ensuring better positioning for you in your career outlook. This emphasis on long-term planning can make you feel secure and prepared for the future.
The structured approach you may need for development, or how those short, mid, and long-term goals for development connect in an ecosystem
There is no single frame that brings everything together for you. Planning for skills development means recognizing how it may impact short-, mid-, and long-term goals, including the benefits and potential challenges.
Short-Term Impact:
Short-term or immediate skills planning allows you to excel in your current role or roles. This may mean allowing you to deliver outstanding results on key initiatives or projects you are involved in, within the organizational structure in which these projects coexist. This helps you mainly build confidence, gain momentum, and start building your credibility as a professional.
Mid-Term Impact:
There are many arguments about how long a midterm should be. The expected longevity for this stage is between 1 and 3 4 years. It is the time frame where your list of immediate wins deepens and grows, just enough to position you as someone who may be trusted one or several levels above. It includes career pivots, lateral moves, and even intentional development projects or roles that focus on developing one or several key skills. This expands your presence and skill set, positioning you in a different light in the eyes and minds of those taking the final decisions. Here is where many young and somewhat experienced professionals fail. Not willing to wait and master the skills, they often go for a role because of the title, but stay at the same level of skills development for an extended period.
Long-Term Impact:
Here is where your strategy works for you, not for her. The long-term planning process includes periods of five, ten, and even more years ahead. It is what creates a compelling narrative for learning and skill development that are sustainable over time and that prove your real worth. Skills acquired over a long time and established as valuable enable your meaningful career growth. It is mainly because, over time, skills that are developed carefully and mastered deeply build your net worth as a professional. They help you to be recognized as someone who creates value instead of just solving immediate problems in your industry.
Now, did I disappoint you by telling you there’s no such thing as a fast win? You can learn through a harmonized long-term development path. Alternatively, you can do what a large part of the Earth population is doing. They are learning through wins and falls while trying to convince themselves how good and fast that process is. It is like having someone who shares with you their secret solution to be rich in just an hour-long course. They promise to save you their five or ten years of struggle. Then you understand that this solution doesn’t work for you as fast as promised.
Suppose you are not so naïve that you believe your success will come because someone is giving you the magical formula of success, shared only with you and anyone else who paid the fee for it. In that case, you may reach a point where you can plan for developing your practical skills.
And no, I am not going to share with you some magical formula that works mainly for you. What you will read below is a simple framework that you may need to adapt to your unique environment, learning style, free time, learning habits, commitment level, etc.
From me, you will only get five simple steps to focus on when you build your skills development growth agenda to prepare yourself for building future success and wealth for you and the environment you exist in.
- Assess Your Current Skills and Benchmark Against Industry Standards
The question with this one is not if you need it, but how to do it the best way possible. There are many tools to do this. You can review past performance reviews and feedback session notes, or use an online self-assessment tool. Alternatively, if you want to do this in a more advanced way, you can use the 360-degree Feedback tools. Already did that? And here is where, according to Inc.com, fifty-nine percent of people fail – you need to compare against something. A good first step is to compare against your company’s internal standards and competencies. But the better choice is to move out of your current environment and assess against industry standards. Leadership may mean one set of competencies and behaviors in one industry and be viewed very differently in another sector, for example. The better you can benchmark your position within a larger framework, the higher the results you will achieve in the following steps. The more clarity you get from this process, the stronger the foundations you set.
- Define Clear and time-allocated goals across multiple levels
The most overused term here is SMART. And so many people use it because it is a universal tool for measuring success that supports various tasks and goals. It should be part of your short-term, mid-term, and long-term planning. For example, a tool you may need to master to help you deal with an urgent problem or challenge, while being part of or leading something larger, like a project or specific process, may become your mid-term goal. And this all prepares you for the ultimate long-term goal: becoming a recognized expert within five years, or a decade or so. You will be surprised how many people skip or combine the first two goals, to get a mediocre result in the long-term agenda, and disappoint themselves
- Identify Development Opportunities and Resources
This one sounds too obvious to become an obstacle. Well, you will be surprised to learn that, according to RBL Inc. research, 39% of people who struggle to develop the right skills wait for someone else to point out what activity they should do to start the building process for themselves. The sad truth is that people still rely primarily on formal education (52% of those asked in the same RBL research), while only a small percentage seek flexible forms. I don’t say that you should skip formal education. It is still the most comprehensive way to explore a wide range of topics and build a strong foundation. But imagine what happens if you need training in a specific area and choose a general education that lasts 2, 3, or even more years. The best way to win here is to start researching individual training programs, courses on topics relevant to you, mentorship options, and learning opportunities tailored to your experience, rather than relying solely on theoretical knowledge or extensive training. Research training programs, workshops, mentorships, courses, and experiential learning opportunities. While you should build your agenda considering both informal and formal learning, there is no need to focus on one or the other. Choosing the best blend of both that helps you grow is the most important thing you should focus on.
- Identify milestones and build a sustainable plan
Many people start learning with a larger, long-term goal in mind and miss the small steps and wins along the way. That often leads to exhaustion and negative experiences. To avoid this state of body and mind, you will need to set your short-, mid-, and long-term priorities. These are your main milestones. They will not only lead your planning process, but will serve as a well-designed, manageable set of steps that keep your internal motivation high while achieving your goals. Creating a personal development journal, or using a traditional project management chart, can help here. They not only help you visualize what you want to see, but also help you set deadlines for each milestone, expand the list of tasks that you should do, and get a realistic view of what you should achieve to get to the final milestone in your long-term plan. It helps you keep the momentum of learning alive and vitalized, energizing you about what you’ve already done and what is to come.
5. Progress through adaptability, flexibility, and regular reviews of your plan
The development map is only the first step. But once created, a strong focus is needed to change and adapt it continually. Once you realize that skills development is an ongoing, evolving process, you will become more effective in it. A regular review here is what you need to focus on. You can set it at a frequency that suits you best—weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, etc. This will help you stay on track and maintain the pace you have already set. On the other hand, it is also working for you to develop flexibility in your plan and adapt it easily to constantly changing environmental conditions. And as a final win, others around you will see your commitment and witness your engagement in change, skills development, and growth.
And now, this should be enough to get your agenda working for you…or maybe not.
If you want your plan to succeed, simply learning is not enough. There are some details that you should consider to achieve great results from your skills development planning. The more robust the planning for skills development is, the more it needs to be aligned with specific details. Here are some of them:
- Aligned with Business Strategy:
You need to focus on finding the balance between personal and professional growth. Your plan needs to include both—the personal aspirations you put into it and the specifics of your organization or the industry you are planning the skills development for.
- Skills Transferability:
Still, in your industry, you need to maintain a focus on skills that can be easily adapted to other sectors. Learning something that is only used in one industry and hoping to be recognized outside the industry where it is valuable is naïve. Yes, the short-term planning may include such skills because they help with doing the work now, but as skills development extends over a longer period, the easier it is to transfer, with some tweaks, the skills you need. Such skills may include communication, leadership, data literacy (instead of specific data analysis skills), etc.
- Resource Investment:
You want something to be sustainable in time. Well, you need to weigh all the resources you have at your disposal. Many start measuring time and money, and they stop there. Please don’t say that these two resources are not necessary, but what you also need here is to measure the energy commitments you make, other times and resources they invest in your development of skills, and even the level of ambition you have to measure the speed at which you achieve results.
- Feedback Channels:
The momentum you build with feedback is crucial for achieving final results as quickly as possible. Building the feedback loops may include input from different mentors you have, coaches who help you find the best solution for you, peers who provide you with feedback on progress, and even help you change the course of your skills development path.
- Measurement and Evaluation:
Assessing outcomes is an essential element, but before doing that, you need to define the metrics that will help you define results and progress. With the right metrics, your progress comes as a natural consequence of what you do. But choosing the wrong metrics can hinder you from achieving your final goals.
FINAL WORDS:
Planning for skills development is much more than a simple checklist. It is a structured process in which you respond to the current situation while simultaneously investing resources to achieve future success. No matter the reason you do skills development, you need to focus on defining your right trajectory of growth and keep the pace within the process already set to achieve results. It helps you not only to build skills now but also to create a legacy for your future success and positioning.
The Human place - a path from you to yourself 